The Death Eaters

[Carol]

No: HPFGUIDX 182844

"Athena" < wrote:
>
> Hello, long time lurker. This is my first post. I have to say
> that from my e-mails from this group Carol and Magpie are very
> deep thinkers and I applaud their analysis of the series.

Carol responds:

Thank you very much.
> 
> I've posted this elsewhere and pretty much nobody really cares about
what I have to say on this specific topic, I am hoping that this group
is different than the others.
> 
> "I have to say that two very specifically named and described Death
Eaters have like ZERO PLAY in HBP, or DH and it really irritates me to
no end. I speak of course about the LeStrange brothers, Rodolphus and
Rabastan. Why if JK wasn't going to use them at all did she bother
naming or even creating them in the first place? I mean the scene in
GOF would have played the same if it were only Bella and Barty on
trial. Was it really necessary to create two characters that we know
nothing and I mean nothing about? Granted Rodolphus gets mentioned
ONCE in DH, but Rabastan is nowhere to be found. If JK found it that
important to give Bella and Barty a co-conspirator on the Longbottom
affair, then Rodolphus would have served that purpose 100% but to add
Rabastan to the fray, and not use him later, felt like a slap in the
face of all us fans of Lord Voldemort and his merry band of Death
Eaters! If they truly were The Dark Lord's most faithful then I
believe that they deserved more mentions than Yaxley, and Dolohov. The
Carrow's got more play than the ones that Voldemort mentions as the
most faithful. I can only hope that with this encyclopedia that
Rowling is releasing that the brothers LeStrange will get a biography,
perhaps a backstory...."
<snip>
> 
> Anybody have any thoughts on this subject?

Carol responds:

And I thought that I was the only one who cared about Rabastan, the
forgotten Death Eater! Not that I'm under any delusions about his
being a good guy, but I wondered the same thing--why JKR bothered to
create him. (Even his name doesn't seem to be a real name: Rabastan
seems to be an alteration of Rastaban, which means "head of the snake.")

We never learn which man in the Pensieve trial scene is Rodolphus and
which is Rabastan and neither of them speaks, in contrast to arrogant
Bella and cowardly Barty. Later in GoF, Voldemort says that the
Lestranges should be here and refers to them as his most faithful
followers, but, IIRC, there's only room for two people in that spot,
and he must be referring to Bellatrix and Rodolphus. Similarly, Sirius
refers to the Lestranges as "a married couple" even though he's
talking about the gang that Severus Snape belonged to and they
wouldn't have been married while they were at Hogwarts. (JKR--or
sirius--is forgetting the age difference between Bellatrix and
Severus--either that or the Black family tapestry is wrong in her
birth year--and Sirius is conveniently concealing Bellatrix's maiden
name.) Not a word about Rabastan, yet he went to Azkaban along with
Bella, Rodolphus, and Barty; is, as far as I can tell, as guilty of
Crucioing the Longbottoms as they are, and would have done so for the
same reason that they did, trying to find information on Voldemort's
whereabouts. Bellatrix's "We alone were faithful" seems to apply
equally to all the four.

We do see Rabastan at the MoM in OoP. He's assigned by Lucius Malfoy
to be Crabbe's partner. Either he or Crabbe seems to be the DE whose
head is caught in the bell jar and keeps turning into a baby's and
back again. (Everyone else can be accounted for.) Since we later see
Bellatrix with two male DEs instead of just Rodolphus, her assigned
partner, my theory is that after Crabbe was trapped by the bell jar,
Rabastan joined his brother and sister-in-law with Bellatrix as their
natural leader.

After that, we hear nothing about him. He is certainly among the DEs
arrested after the MoM fiasco, he is almost certainly among those who
escape, but unlike Rodolphus, who is mentioned as being injured in
that fight, we hear nothing of Rabastan, the ever-forgotten DE. And we
don't learn whether Rodolphus recovered. Is he dead? In St. Mungo's?
At home, too injured to join the DEs? He's certainly not with his
darling wife, Bellatrix. We don't know whether either brother fought
at the Battle of Hogwarts, either.

I realize that we don't know the fates of a lot of people on the other
side, either. What happened to Ludo Bagman? To Fudge? To Viktor Krum
after the attack on the Burrow? To dear old Arabella Figg?

But it's strange that JKR suddenly brings in DEs we've never heard of
like Selwyn (she needs him because of the connection with Dolores
Umbridge, but why not mention him earlier?) and others like Mulciber,
Travers, and Dolohov, who have been mentioned before (though Travers
wasn't at the MoM) or Yaxley and the Carrows and Thorfinn Rowle, the
big blond DE, who aren't even mentioned until HBP. Jugson appears out
of nowhere at the MoM and then disappears from the story again. Maybe
JKR is trying to show that the number of DEs is larger than we
originally thought, but still, as you say, why create Rabastan and
Rodolphus, have them arrested for a horrendous crime, and then give
Barty Jr. and Bellatrix all the glory, erm, infamy?

It's also interesting that the MoM crew consists of a combination of
Azkaban escapees and DEs who have successfully kept their cover as
respectable citizens (Avery and Macnair and poor old Nott, for
example, not to mention Lucius Malfoy) and Azkaban escapees like the
three Lestranges and Dolohov. We know that ten escaped the first time
(I could probably come up with most of their names but I'm not going
to try). I don't think that we know how many escaped the second time,
but they seem to have taken Stan Shunpike with them--and Mundungus
Fletcher must have gotten out of jail free at the same time since he's
arrested for impersonating an Inferius in HBP and yet he's Snape's
"source" and a most unhelpful member of the Seven Potters escape
committee in DH.

At any rate, even though I'm no fan of "Lord Voldemort and his merry
band of Death Eaters," but I do still find it interesting to try to
figure out who was in which group, which DE was the baby-headed one,
what happened to him and to poor old Nott, and so forth.

I just had a thought as I was typing. We don't hear anything from
Avery in DH, either. Maybe the entire group of DEs who were involved
in the MoM fiasco, including the Lestrange brothers, is in disgrace
with Voldemort in DH and so their places are taken by the likes of
Yaxley and Travers and even the incredibly stupid Carrows. (Snape, of
course, has his own career trajectory and agenda.)

Carol, who would like to know what happened to the various DEs,
especially Rabastan, but only if JKR has actually given the matter
careful thought